Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

After the delivery of this speech General Grant and Senator Sumner held no personal intercourse. Public opinion did not justify the course of Mr. Sumner. It was regarded as an exhibition of temper unworthy of his high position, and his speech was distinguished by a tone not proper to be employed towards the President of the United States. But he had not imputed, as General Grant assumed, any personal corruption to him. On the contrary he considered the questionable course of General Babcock to be without instruction. General Grant's reference in his message to Mr. Sumner's angry arraignment, a part of which is already quoted, closed with a mention of "acrimonious debates in Congress" and "unjust aspersions elsewhere." "No man," said he, "can hope to perform duties so delicate and responsible as appertain to the Presidential office without sometimes incurring the hostility of those who deem their opinions and wishes treated with insufficient consideration." This was a direct personal reference to Mr. Sumner, perfectly understood at that time. General Grant continued: "He who undertakes to conduct the affairs of a great government as a faithful public servant, if sustained by the approval of his own conscience, may rely with confidence upon the candor and intelligence of a free people, whose best interests he has striven to subserve, and can hear with patience the censure of disappointed men."

No further attempt was made by the President to urge the acquisition of San Domingo upon Congress. It was evident that neither the Senate nor House could be induced to approve the scheme, and the Administration was necessarily compelled to abandon it. But defeat did not change General Grant's view of the question. He held to his belief in its expediency and value with characteristic tenacity. In his last annual message to Congress (December, 1876), nearly six years after the controversy had closed, he recurred to the subject, to record once more his approval of it. "If my views," said he, "had been concurred in, the country would be in a more prosperous condition to-day, both politically and financially." He then proceeded to re-state the question, and to sustain it with the argument which he had presented to Congress in 1870 and 1871. His last words were: "I do not present these views now as a recommendation for a renewal of the subject of annexation, but I do refer to it to vindicate my previous action in regard to it."

Though the Reconstruction measures were all perfected before General Grant's election to the Presidency, the necessary Acts prescribed by them had not been completed by all the States. The three which had not been admitted to representation, and had not taken part in the National election,—Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas,—had by the spring of 1870 fully complied with all the requirements, and were therefore admitted to all the privileges which had been accorded to the other States of the South. Virginia was admitted to representation in Congress by the Act of Jan. 26, Mississippi by the Act of Feb. 26, and Texas by the Act of March 30 (1870). It was their own fault, and not the design of the Government, that prevented these States from being included in the same bill with their associates in rebellion.

The reconstruction of Georgia, supposed to have been completed the preceding year by the admission of her representatives to the House, was taken up for review at the opening of the Forty-first Congress. Neither her senators nor representatives were permitted to be sworn, but their credentials were referred in each House to the Committee on Elections. In the judgment of the majority the conduct of Georgia justified this severe course. Her Legislature, after complying with every condition of reconstruction, took an extraordinary and unaccountable step. That body decided that colored men were not entitled to serve as legislators or to hold any office in Georgia. They were therefore expelled from their seats, while white men, not eligible to hold office under the Fourteenth Amendment, were retained. The Fifteenth Amendment was then rejected by the Legislature, composed exclusively of white men. These facts were ascertained before the senators from Georgia were admitted to their seats, and before the Fifteenth Amendment had yet been ratified by the requisite number of States.

Congress took prompt cognizance of this condition of affairs, and passed another bill on the 16th of December (1869), declaring "that the exclusion of persons from the Legislature upon the ground of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, would be illegal and revolutionary, and is hereby prohibited." In order to make the prohibition effective, Georgia was required, before her senators and representatives could be seated, to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Legislature of Georgia was accordingly re-assembled, the colored members resumed their seats, and the Fifteenth Amendment was duly ratified on the 2d of February (1870). The conditions were considered by some prominent Republicans to be an assumption of power on the part of Congress, and were therefore opposed actively by Mr. Carpenter in the Senate and Mr. Bingham in the House; but the great body of the party insisted upon them, and the movement had the full sympathy of the President. The course pursued by Georgia made her the last State to be reconstructed. The final Act for her re-admission to the right of representation in Congress was passed on the 15th of July, 1870.

The adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment had become in the minds of thinking men an essential link in the chain of reconstruction. The action of Georgia in expelling colored men from the Legislature after her reconstruction was supposed to be complete, roused the country to the knowledge of what was intended by the leading men of the South; and the positive action of Congress roused the leading men of the South to a knowledge of what was intended by Congress. On the 30th of March Secretary Fish issued a proclamation making known to the people of the United States that the Fifteenth Amendment had been ratified by the Legislatures of thirty States and was therefore a part of the Constitution of the United States. New York, which had given her ratification when the Legislature was Republican, attempted at the succeeding session, with the Democratic party in power, to withdraw its recorded assent; but as in the case of the Fourteenth Amendment, action on the subject was held to be completed when the State officially announced it, and New York was numbered among the States which had ratified the Amendment. The only States opposing it were New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, California, and Oregon. At the time the Amendment was submitted, the Legislatures of these States were under the absolute control of the Democratic party. The hostility of that party to the Fifteenth Amendment was as rancorous as it had been to the Fourteenth. Not a single Democrat voted to ratify it in either branch of Congress, and the Democratic opposition in the State Legislatures throughout the Union was almost equally pronounced.(1)

This radical change in the Organic Law of the Republic was regarded by President Grant as so important, that he notified Congress of its official promulgation, by special message. He dwelt upon the character of the Amendment, and addressed words of counsel to both races. "I call the attention of the newly enfranchised race," said he, "to the importance of striving in every honorable manner to make themselves worthy of their new privilege. To the race more favored heretofore by our laws, I would say, Withhold no legal privilege of advancement to the new citizens." He called upon Congress to promote popular education throughout the country by all the means within their Constitutional power, in order that universal suffrage might be based on universal intelligence.

In the same spirit that led to the message of the President, Congress proceeded to enact laws protecting the rights that were guaranteed under the new Constitutional Amendment. On the 31st of May (1870), two months after the Amendment was promulgated, an Act was passed "to enforce the right of citizens of the United States to vote in the several States in this Union." Eight months later, on the 28th of February, 1871, an additional Act on the same subject was passed. These statutes were designed to protect, as far as human law can protect, the right of every man in the United States to vote, and they were enacted with special care to arrest the dangers already developing in the South against free suffrage, and to prevent the dangers more ominously though more remotely menacing it. The Republican party was unanimous in support of these measures, while the Democratic party had nearly consolidated their votes against them. It was not often that the line of party was so strictly drawn as at this period and on issues of this character.

As the Reconstruction of each State was completed, the Military Government that was instituted in 1867 was withdrawn. The Southern people—at first proclaiming a sense of outrage at the presence of soldiers in time of peace—soon became content with the orderly, just, and fair administration which the commanding generals enforced. Many of the wisest men of the South would have been glad to continue the same form of government, until the passions engendered by the war had somewhat cooled and the new relations of the two races had become so amicably adjusted as to remove all danger of conflict between them. But the course of events did not suggest, and perhaps would not have permitted, an arrangement of this character; and hence the States were left, under the Constitution and laws of the Union, to shape their own destiny.

The presumption was that these States would be obedient to the Constitution and laws. But for this presumption, legislation would be but idle play, and a government of laws would degenerate at once into a government of force. In enacting the Reconstruction Laws Congress proceeded upon the basis of faith in Republican government, as defined so tersely by Mr. Lincoln—of the people, by the people, for the people. It had the additional assurance of the acceptance of the terms of Reconstruction by the lawful organizations of the Southern States. And if the presumption of obedience with respect to statute law be general, much stronger should it be with respect to organic law, upon which the entire structure of free government is founded. It was therefore logical for the National administration to assume, as Reconstruction was completed, that the harmonious working of the Federal government through all its members was formally re-established. It was a cause of great rejoicing that, after four years of bloody war and four years of laborious and careful Reconstruction, every State in the Union had regained its autonomy in the first year of General Grant's Presidency; and that the Government and the people of the Union were entitled to look forward to peaceful administration, to friendly intercourse, to the cultivation of kindly feeling, to the promotion of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce. The lenity with which the triumphant Union had treated the crime of rebellion—sacrificing no man's life, stripping no man of his property, depriving no man of his personal liberty—gave the Government the right to expect order and the reign of law in the South.